THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: NEWS ANALYSIS; A Symbolic Vote Is a Sign Of Bitter Debates to Come

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: February 17, 2007

The symbolic House vote on Friday opposing the American troop buildup in Iraq was an act of Congressional defiance that lays the groundwork for an even more bitter and ultimately more consequential clash over whether and how lawmakers might restrict President Bush's authority to prosecute the war.

Even before the vote, the White House and Democrats who control Congress were girding for the next fight, over Mr. Bush's request for $99.6 billion in emergency spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Already, Democrats are contemplating moves that, while short of cutting off money for the war, would restrict how Mr. Bush can spend it by limiting the Pentagon's ability to recycle troops back to Iraq after they have returned home.

The 246-to-182 vote, with 17 Republicans crossing party lines to join Democrats, was a stark reminder of how isolated Mr. Bush has become as he presses ahead with his increasingly unpopular Iraq policy. The president himself seemed resigned to the outcome. At a news conference on Wednesday, he told reporters, ''They have every right to express their opinion.''

At this point, it is unclear whether that opinion will eventually translate into the political resolve to rein in Mr. Bush. But by emboldening critics of the Iraq war, the vote has made the debate over financing, which would have been unthinkable even six months ago, a virtual certainty. ''What the president is getting is a real indication that the weather is going to get worse,'' said Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader. ''He's going to be in the middle of a huge storm.''

At his news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Bush seemed to be telling lawmakers to bring it on. ''I'm going to make it very clear to the members of Congress, starting now,'' he said, ''that they need to fund our troops and they need to make sure we have the flexibility necessary to get the job done.''

American history is replete with examples of clashes between Congress and the White House over war powers. Congress, for example, used its power of the purse to bar covert military assistance for the Nicaraguan contras -- a move that led to the Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan -- and to cap the number of troops in Vietnam.

When it comes to the war in Iraq, Mr. Bush has been betting that Congress will be unwilling to play that kind of ''constitutional hardball,'' in the words of Martin S. Lederman, an expert on presidential war powers at the Georgetown University School of Law.

If Congress does try to restrict financing, Mr. Bush could be forced into a difficult choice of abiding by a statute he does not approve of, or asserting he has the constitutional authority to flout it.

Or, if lawmakers attach restrictions to a military spending measure, he could find himself in the uncomfortable position of vetoing a bill that provides money for the troops.

Allies of Mr. Bush make clear he will not accept financing restrictions without a fight.

''No president can afford to accept that kind of condition,'' said David B. Rivkin, a lawyer for the Reagan and first Bush administrations, who has been an ardent supporter of Mr. Bush in Iraq. ''If Congress can do this to the president, the president, instead of being head of a co-equal branch, is a ward of Congress, a flunky.''

For Democrats, the debate is not without political risk. They do not want to seem unpatriotic by advocating withdrawal of financial support for soldiers engaged in battle. At the same time, they are under intense pressure from the antiwar faction of their party and mindful of the results of midterm elections in November, which put them in the majority and have been widely interpreted as a call to bring the troops home.

On the House floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to give voice to the Democrats' balancing act. ''The bipartisan resolution today is nonbinding,'' she said, ''but it will send a strong message to the president: we are committed to supporting the troops and we disapprove of the escalation.''

But symbolically opposing the president's plan to add more than 20,000 troops is not enough for war opponents, who have been banding together in state legislatures around the country to pass their own nonbinding resolutions and are pressing Congress to do more.

''We want the war to end,'' said the author of one such bill, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, who represents Seattle in the Washington State Senate.

''We want to have no more escalation, period,'' she said. ''Rather than a nonbinding resolution, I would like Congress to take action to make it binding.''

Just how Democrats will proceed is not entirely clear. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who is running for president, wants to repeal the 2002 resolution authorizing the Iraq war. Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who leads the House subcommittee that oversees the Pentagon budget, is drafting his own version of the president's financing request that could effectively limit troop deployments to Iraq.

The Murtha plan has already proven explosive. ThePolitico.com, a Web site that covers politics, dubbed it a ''slow-bleed strategy,'' a term that Republicans seized upon. In an online commentary posted Friday, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, wrote, ''The national Democratic Party has become the puppet of antiwar groups.''

The president, meanwhile, has pursued a kind of divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting the Senate against the House. With the Senate set to take up the House resolution on Saturday, he has been reminding reporters that the Senate had overwhelmingly confirmed Gen. David H. Petraeus -- who supports the troop buildup -- as the new American troop commander in Iraq. Why, Mr. Bush asks, would the House disapprove of the plan that the Senate has sent General Petraeus to carry out?

People on both sides say the Senate is unlikely to muster the votes to pass the House resolution, let alone restrain spending authority.

Mr. Bush has been urging Congress and the American public to give his troop buildup a chance, and for a while, at least, that argument may hold. The question is, how long?